"Who? My clients? They haven't been to look at it either.... And besides, even if they had seen it, they don't look so narrowly! The red, the green, the blue—they only see the fire in it. Sometimes I copy the original in colors, but I change the colors.... See here, for instance, this one...." (An angel by Murillo).
"Do you find it's better?"
"No, but it amused me.... And then, it's easier.... And besides, it's all the same to me. The essential thing is that this will sell...."
At this last piece of boasting she stopped, took the color sketches from him and burst out laughing.
"Ha! So they're even uglier than you had expected?"
He said, greatly annoyed:
"But why, why do you make things like these?"
She examined his upset visage with a kindly smile of maternal irony; this dear little bourgeois for whom everything had been so easy and who could not conceive that one must make concessions for....
He asked once more:
"Why? Tell me, why?"